Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Work was proceeding on a dam across lower Hangman Creek in what is now High Bridge Park. The parks department was making a new swimming pool, or, more accurately, a swimmin’ hole.

“Hangman Creek furnished the ‘old swimmin’ hole’ when I was a boy 30 years ago,” said L.R. Hamblen, the chairman of the playgrounds committee. “The water is much warmer than the (Spokane) river. With the Sinto pools in the east and Hangman Creek in the west, we will be well cared for in the matter of free public bathing places.”

The Sinto pools were proving to be quite popular, with “new shower baths with hot and cold water, free to every one.”

From the crime beat: A taxi driver responded to a call at the Empire Hotel, where a man and a woman got in the car and told him to head out of town.

Then he felt “cold steel at the back of his neck” and the man said, “Stop ’er.” The man held the gun on him and the woman frisked him. Then the man said, “See them lights? That’s Spokane. Put one foot in front of the other just as fast as you know how. Beat it.”

The couple roared off in his big Winston touring car, and the taxi driver hoofed it to the nearest house, where the called police. Police were scouring the region for the car.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1215: England’s King John put his seal to the Magna Carta (“Great Charter”) at Runnymede.